right, wrong. not easy to say.
ethically, yes. legally, no.
my ex brother-in-law is a contractor, and would routinely charge the more wealthy customers more, not usually much more, but more. mainly becuase he would always say the clients tended to complain more and demand more freeby changes after the job is done.

i dont really agree with him, but the fact is, greed is a powerfull thing, and an easy manipulator of your morals.

Don't you have a higher chance of breaking something expensive in there? therefore you need to account for the cost to replace those items.
BTW as a business person, you're supposed to charge based on how much you can get from this person, not how much you can get from the person down the road.

In most of the expensive item situations we move that, I got to a job and there was a very nice M5 right around where I need to work, we just moved it.

I see that charging more can backfire if they talk to someone else who used your service and find out you charged them more for the same thing. If someone did that to me I would feel like I was taken advantage of and let others know "dont call this guy he will rip you off"

Wealthy people pay alot more in taxes for hte same police and teachers (who they often don't even use). Is it fair to charge them more for the same/less service?

It doesn't matter. Tax policy should not be based on any concept of "fairness". Standards of fairness differ from person to person such that my fair solution would be a flat tax and others would be massively higher percentage taxes on the largest earners (or even a wealth tax on money that you just have sitting around, pure theft in my mind) and next to no taxes on the lower classes.

Tax policy should be determined based on what brings in the needed revenue while doing the least harm to the national economy, not what is the "fairest".

The question originally asked cannot relate directly to a discussion of tax policy as taxation and individuals making voluntary business transactions too different to reasonably compare.

Price discrimination is not wrong in 99.99% of cases (yes, I’m sure you can think up some situation where it would be but in general it isn’t). Whether it be me charging the rich guy more because I know he doesn’t care, or me charging the poor guy more because the neighborhood that he lives in carries a higher risk of me being physically assaulted by being there (or country for that matter, I’m charging the guy in Sudan more for work than I’m charging the guy in North Dakota because the odds of me being killed or taken hostage in Sudan are so much higher).

If King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia (or any other INSANELY rich person) wants to rent specifically the top floor of the building I own, you better believe I'm charging him twenty times what I charge other people. He doesn't care one bit how much it costs and I can make enough to send all of my kids to college in a month.

Last edited by DEATHETERNAL; 2013-01-15 at 02:50 AM.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
Revelation 6:8

Not if you differentiate the service enough. Price discrimination is very common in the service industry. Think movies, airfare, cell phone plans, grocery coupons, etc.

Edit: To those saying it's wrong, we're living in a free market, no one is putting a gun to the homeowner's head, he or she can decline the service.

Of course you're gonna differentiate the service to make the extra cost make sense. People that are wealthy or famous are automatically treated different than the average person. Would you go more out of your way to provide the best service to someone wealthy or would you give some smelly bum that walked in your door the same level of attention? Don't think too hard about this.

In most of the expensive item situations we move that, I got to a job and there was a very nice M5 right around where I need to work, we just moved it.

I see that charging more can backfire if they talk to someone else who used your service and find out you charged them more for the same thing. If someone did that to me I would feel like I was taken advantage of and let others know "dont call this guy he will rip you off"

Here's how I see it:
Lets say your boss pays you 1k per week, or 200 per day.
Lets say on Monday he can get only $150 for your work. But on Tuesday he can get $400 for your work. He has to make sure he'll make at least 1k this week, and hopefully more for profit.
If he sells your work for consistent $300 per day, than he would get 0 on Monday (because guy who paid him $150, couldn't afford $300).

Are you the boss, or are you the guy working for someone? If you're not the boss, I suggest doing what boss tells you.
If you are the boss, you can determine that consistent pricing is better for your business.

I am not anyone's boss.
When we get estimates for a house, and plain out tell them that we can't afford it, they usually come down by more than 50% for labor. That only happens if they have no other work though.
And we're not lying, I've just redid steps myself because I couldn't afford 1k, and now they look like total crap.

How so? Are taxes not paid in order to provide the government with the ability to provide a service to people? Its fairly obvious that the more wealthy are paying more for the same service, if you chose to look at it that way.

there are more factors than just paying to provide service. And, it could be argued that even with your definition, rich people are using a different service than poor people, and that comes with a premium. For example, you can't really invest in stocks if you're poor. This service (while not directly a government service, it is regulated and given a place in the economy by the government) is not available to certain groups of people, but becomes more available the more wealth you have. Until we have a system that does not allow richer people to gain an exponentially (relative to wealth) increasing benefits for their cash, there is no reason for rich and poor to pay equal relative amounts.

You charge people what they are willing to pay. There is nothing right or wrong about it. If people aren't willing to pay the price you are asking for a product or service they will go elsewhere. If they would rather pay more than shop around that is their choice to do so.